Guided Instruction: How to Develop Confident and Successful Learners

You know that repeating the same words and the same instructions—or simply announcing the answers to questions—doesn't help students learn. How do you get past the predictable and really teach your kids how to learn?

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey say that helping students develop immediate and lifelong learning skills is best achieved through guided instruction, which they define as "saying or doing the just-right thing to get the learner to do cognitive work"—in other words, gradually and successfully transferring knowledge and the responsibility for learning to students through scaffolds for learning. In this helpful and informative book, they explain how guided instruction fits your classroom and works for your students.

Their four-part system for implementation consists of these elements:

* Questioning to check for understanding.

* Prompting to facilitate students' thinking processes and processing.

* Cueing to shift students' attention to focus on specific information, errors, or partial understandings.

* Explaining and modeling when students do not have sufficient knowledge to complete tasks on their own.

Each element is thoroughly explained and illustrated with numerous examples drawn from the authors' extensive experience in the classroom and their observations of hundreds of expert teachers, as well as a broad sampling of relevant research. Aimed at teachers at all grade levels, across the curriculum, Guided Instruction will help you provide timely and meaningful scaffolds that boost students to higher levels of understanding and accomplishment.

Nancy Frey, PhD, a Professor at San Diego State University received the 2008 Early Career Achievement Award from the National Reading Conference. Dr. Frey has published in The Reading Teacher, English Journal, Remedial and Special Education, and Educational Leadership. She has co-authored more than fifty books on English Learners (Language Learners in the English Classroom), assessment (Checking for Understanding), writing (Scaffolded Writing Instruction), literacy (Reading for Information in Elementary School) and vocabulary (Learning Words Inside and Out). Dr. Frey teaches a variety of courses on reading instruction and literacy in content areas, classroom management, and supporting students with diverse learning needs. She also was a third grade classroom teacher.

Douglas Fisher, PhD, is a professor of language and literacy education in the Department of Teacher Education at San Diego State University (SDSU), the codirector for the Center for the Advancement of Reading at the California State University Chancellor s Office, and a past director of professional development for the City Heights Educational Collaborative. He is the recipient of the International Reading Association Celebrate Literacy Award as well as the Christa McAuliffe award for excellence in teacher education from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction, and curriculum design as well as books, including Creating Literacy-Rich Schools for Adolescents (with Gay Ivey), Improving Adolescent Literacy: Strategies at Work (with Nancy Frey), and Teaching English Language Learners: A Differentiated Approach (with Carol Rothenberg). Doug has taught a variety of courses in SDSU s teacher-credentialing program as well as graduate-level courses on English language development and literacy. A former early intervention specialist and language development specialist, he has also taught high school English, writing, and literacy development to public school students.